Hedge-Fund Master Channels P.T. Barnum

The cover of "The Art of the Sale" by Philip Delves Broughton. Selling is the driver of commerce, not a sideshow, Delves Broughton argues in this engaging melange of research and reporting. Source: Penguin Press via Bloomberg

May 30 (Bloomberg) -- Richard Perry is best known as a
hedge-fund heavy, an event-driven investor who thrives on
companies caught up in mergers and spinoffs or emerging from
bankruptcy.

He also has something in common with Steve Jobs, Estee
Lauder and P.T. Barnum.

“It’s all about sales,” the founder of New York hedge
fund Perry Capital LLC says early on in “The Art of the Sale”
by Philip Delves Broughton. “If I have sales, I can create
profit.”

Delves Broughton is the former Daily Telegraph reporter
whose book “Ahead of the Curve” chronicled his two years
getting an MBA at Harvard Business School. His latest quest
propelled him across the globe -- from San Francisco’s
Embarcadero to a Tangier souk and on to Tokyo -- searching for
the secrets of a discipline absent from the HBS curriculum.

Selling is the driver of commerce, not a sideshow, he
argues in this engaging melange of research and reporting.
Though salespeople are often sneered at as a low caste of
untouchables reeking of cheap cologne, they are the workers who
actually generate revenue, he reminds us.

Delves Broughton revels in the diversity of salespeople and
their patter, from Barnum’s humbug to Jobs’s monastic garb and
charismatic cult of iCool. Traveling to Tampa, Florida, he meets
Tony “Sully” Sullivan, an infomercial barker who learned to
pitch products by selling Washmatics in open-air markets.
(“It’s like giving your car a shower instead of a bath.”)

‘Queequeg of Sales’

In Tokyo, he introduces a life-insurance salesman with a
gelled Mohawk -- “a fearsome-looking man, a Queequeg of
sales.” In between, we get to know Seddik Belyamani, a
Moroccan-born American who sold $30 billion of Boeing Co.
planes, Delves Broughton says.

And then there’s Larry Gagosian, the New York art dealer.
His office had “the austere calm of a private papal chamber,”
the author recalls from an interview that verges on seduction.

As the snapshot portraits show, this isn’t a book of tips
for closing a sale. It is, rather, an earnest effort to
understand what drives master salespeople -- to “sort through
the paradoxes” of a profession that touches all our lives.

Far more Americans are employed in sales jobs than in
manufacturing or finance, he says. And the rest of us do some
selling every day, even if it’s just coaxing our kids to do
their homework.

Setting the Stage

While Richard Perry is judged by his risk-adjusted returns,
he still dresses for success and keeps his offices clad in
modern art that bespeaks the firm’s wealth.

“If you aren’t selling, you aren’t part of the world,” he
tells Delves Broughton.

Americans hold two conflicting views on selling, Delves
Broughton says. There are those, like Dale Carnegie, who see
selling as the great leveler, a way to cut through class and
upbringing.

Then there’s the brutal opposing picture presented in
Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” where the unrelenting
demands of commercial gain destroy Willy Loman.

The Faustian bargain implicit in selling is clear to Delves
Broughton, the son of an Anglican clergyman. Pharmaceutical
companies engage in “disease mongering,” persuading healthy
people that they’re ailing. Restaurants, stuck with food that’s
about to go off, sell it as the day’s special.

Smart Mops

Yet for every unscrupulous operator, the author finds
hardworking men and women who believe that selling provides a
genuine service.

Sullivan, the infomercial hawker of Smart Mops, won’t push
a new gadget until he puts it through its paces at home, he
says; his reputation depends on it. Belyamani, the Boeing
salesman, speaks three languages and trained in aeronautics,
management and economics.

“He is a mathematician, an engineer, a man of many
cultures and languages, who when deployed to sell became more
than the sum of his parts,” Delves Broughton writes.

Salesmanship requires an extra helping of the traits needed
in life, including resilience and optimism. It all boils down to
human rejection and acceptance, the author says, to turning a no
into a yes.

It’s Delves Broughton’s way of saying, “Step right up and
buy this book. Don’t delay. Order now.”

“The Art of the Sale: Learning From the Masters About the
Business of Life” is from Penguin Press in the U.S. (291 pages,
$27.95). It’s available in the U.K. as a Portfolio paperback
under the title “Life’s a Pitch: What the World’s Best Sales
People Can Teach Us All” (12.99 pounds). To buy this book in
North America, click here.

(James Pressley writes for Muse, the arts and leisure
section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

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